Welcome on our blog !

Dear teacher and classmates,

As explained during the English class, our project for this semester is about the exhibition "From One Revolution to Another" ("D’une revolution à l’autre"), curated by the artist Jeremy Deller at Le Palais de Tokyo. Your answers to our questionnaire showed that you would be interested in visiting this exhibition with us. This outing will take place on Friday, 12th December, 2009 at 6 pm after the class.

By the way, we can tell you more about the organization of this event. Thinking of you and guided by the original shape of the exhibition, we decided to avoid the classic “guided tour” which could be exhausting. Actually, our aim is to point some details in order that you construct your interpretation by yourself. That is why we have prepared a playful quiz that we will give you on the spot. Furthermore, we are preparing audio files, that you will be able to download in few days. These podcasts will give you more indications by our own voices.

Through this first contact by our blog, we also take the opportunity to introduce you to the way we will use it. This blog will serve as an interface between you and us. Indeed, we will post articles related to the social, historical and cultural background of this unusual exhibition. In your turn, you will have the possibility to enrich the content of the blog by writing comments, notably with your feed-back after the visit of the exhibition. It should be a productive way to share ideas. And we are sure that topics like popular culture and cultural revolution would inspire you!

We would be glad to see you in great number at Le Palais de Tokyo!

Let’s make this blog alive!

Laura, Romain, Emilie, Anna and Aurélien.

Folk Archive, anthropology or art ?

Folk Archive is the personal work of Jeremy Deller in this exhibition. The collection presents some traditional practices, artistic or individual that you may be extravagant. As the funny face competition, the fight embroidery, the celebration of the French Revolution in England ... they are mass behavior, individual affirmations face against social rules too strict, customizations or protests, demands.

Jeremy Deller refuses a hierarchy between the arts and everyday objects, the commercial and the common. His objective is to capture performance, perishable, the life moment where popular class escapes of its dark life. Deller is interested in British life in its small details; details that define a culture, an identity: multicolored cakes, ritual battles between villages, parades disguised, sculptures of vegetables, etc. It is an unofficial Britain version. It is the creative life! Folk Archive, recently purchased by the British Council, shows the continuity of folklore in Britain today.

Inevitably, there are a lot of humors. Photos and videos are still exposed kitsch and show wacky traditions. This exhibition shows the taste of English for the costumes, fancy dress. For us it is explained in two ways: there is a tradition inherited from Shakespeare, where women were not allowed to play on stage. The men were on stage to travesty. However, there is also the importance of social classes. In England, the social hierarchy is so rigid that costumes had the only way to be what you could not be.

In front of this collector fever of Jeremy Deller, the exhibition is a work to reading as a novel, watching as a movie, looking through as a portfolio. And Jeremy Deller is an artist, a theater director. After this visit, you will want just one desire: take a Eurostar ticket!

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